1. Technical Field
The present application relates generally to a system and method for accessing information and, more particularly, to a system and method for providing automatic and continuous selection of user-preferred Internet data streams using predefined parameters.
2. Description of Related Art
Currently, the accessing of multimedia data streams over the Internet from remote servers has become increasingly popular. For example, video data streams (video streaming) is a sequence of moving images that are typically transmitted in compressed form over the Internet, with each moving image in the sequence being displayed on a host computer monitor as it arrives. In addition, data streams having only audio or a combination of video and sound are referred to as streaming media. With streaming video or streaming media, the user does not have to wait to download a large file before seeing a video and/or hearing the sound. For Internet data streams, the client/server multimedia presentation control protocol RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) has been developed for transmitting streamed multimedia over IP (Internet Protocol) networks. In addition, RTP (Real Tire Transport Protocol) is a packet format for multimedia data streams which is used by the RSTP for the data portion of the RSTP.
Referring to FIG. 1, a diagram illustrates a conventional system 10 for connecting to a desired one of a plurality of data stream servers 11 over the Internet 12. Such a connection is often made through a firewall proxy 13, to ensure the security of, e.g., various hosts 14 of a LAN (local area network). Once a local host 14 establishes connection (via the Internet infrastructure 12) to a desired data stream server 11, the data stream server 11 transmits a continuous stream of data packets to the local host computer 14 to be processed. Such data streams are often used for sending audio and video data, and the processing at the local computer 14 is actually data rendering. In this way, users can view or listen to audio and video sequences that are downloaded from the Internet. The data streams may also be numerical or text data, such as a news ticker or data from a process monitoring system.
Accessing a desired data stream using the conventional system of FIG. 1 typically requires a user to manually enter or select a URL of one or more desired web sites before even knowing the current contents of such web sites. For instance, the user must manually search the Internet to download data streams of desired songs. Even when the user finds a desired data stream, the constant repetition of manually searching for user-preferred data streams can be burdensome and time consuming for the user. Accordingly, a system is desired that can automatically and continuously connect to user-preferred data streams thereby allowing a user to, e.g., listen to preferred songs off the Internet on a continuous basis.
The present invention is directed to a system and method for providing automatic and continuous selection of user-preferred data streams based on predefined parameters. In one aspect of the present invention, a client/server system comprises:
a sever comprising an address list including addresses of a plurality of data sources; and
a client comprising a list of user preferences; means for accessing the server to obtain the address list; means for accessing at least a first data source of the plurality of data sources on the address list to obtain descriptive information; evaluation means for evaluating the descriptive information and the user preferences to select at least a second data source of the plurality of data sources based on the evaluation; and means for accessing the second data source.
In another aspect of the present invention, a method for automatically accessing preferred data streams comprises the steps of:
accessing an address list from a server, the address list comprising addresses of a plurality of data sources;
accessing each of the plurality of data sources using the addresses;
extracting relevant information from each of the accessed data sources;
evaluating the extracted information to select a first preferred data source; and
accessing at least one information data stream that is associated with the first preferred data source.
In one exemplary embodiment of the present invention as applied to Internet radio stations, a user would be allowed to listen only to songs from his list of favorites. In another exemplary embodiment as applied to Internet sporting events, a user can hear the most exciting parts of one or more current sporting events. In another exemplary embodiment as applied to industrial process monitoring, a remote user could ensure that he would always see any data stream that had anomalous readings.
These and other aspects, features and advantages of the present invention will be described and become apparent from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, which is to be read in connection with the accompanying drawings.